Banff World Media Festival: The explosive and lasting impact of Surviving R. Kelly

Kitti Jones realizes that her name and face might always be associated with R. Kelly, the R & B superstar who spent decades under a cloud of suspicion about his abusive relationships to woman and underage girls. A former girlfriend of the musician, Jones was named in a 2017 article by Jim DeRogatis in BuzzFeed News that chronicled accusations that Kelly was holding young women in an “abusive cult.” Jones said she was the under the impression that her name would not be used in the article. So to take control of her story, she agreed to be the subject of a detailed Rolling Stone feature later that year about her experiences with Kelly. It presented a disturbing and graphic account of his controlling and abusive behaviour. She accused the singer of starving and beating her and forcing her to have sex with women as she became a virtual prisoner in Kelly’s home.

Jones would later write a memoir about her experiences, titled I Was Somebody Before This. She was also among the women who participated in the Lifetime documentary miniseries Surviving R. Kelly, which led to a number of criminal charges against the singer that are before the courts. Now, with every twist and turn the case takes, Jones is contacted by the media for her opinion.

“No one wants to walk around and have this attached to them for the rest of their lives,” says Jones, in an interview from the Banff World Media Festival earlier this week. “When people hear my name now, they automatically think of him. People who have known me, when they hear a song of his they think about what he did to me. I’m going to have to live with that. I’m happy that the conversation is still out there and I brought awareness to the situation. It’s made him uncomfortable. He’s being held accountable and hopefully we get the right results this time during the trial. But I’m ready to get my life back.”

Lifetime’s Surviving R. Kelly was honoured at the Banff World Media Festival earlier this week, picking up the program of the year honour at the Rockie Awards. Jones, who is listed as survivor and author on the festival webpage, joined executive producers dream hampton and Tamra Simmons and Brie Miranda Bryant, senior vice-president of unscripted development and programming at Lifetime, for a masterclass on the series.

The name of the talk, “The explosive impact of Surviving R. Kelly,” is not hyperbole. The six-part miniseries aired on Lifetime in January and offered detailed, first-person accounts of Kelly’s alleged sexual abuse. It attracted millions of viewers. After it aired, Kelly’s record label dropped him. High-profile former collaborators such as Lady Gaga released statements expressing regret for having worked with him. Within a month, Kelly had been charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. Earlier this week, he was back in court facing 11 new charges. Clearly, the story is continuing. Which brings up an obvious question about whether Lifetime is planning a followup.

Six months after the miniseries first aired, no decision has been made, Bryant says.

“We’ve gone back and forth with it,” says Bryant, who was the executive who helped get the project greenlit at Lifetime. “I think, right now, we’re still processing things. It was a huge undertaking for production. It was taxing for the survivors and the participants. For the moment, we’re following it very closely.”

Hampton, who said she went into therapy after working on the project, has emphatically said she wasn’t interested in working on a followup, even though she is obviously aware of the positive impact Surviving R. Kelly has had.

“Really it was about just giving them the space to tell a story that they had been living and just honouring their stories,” hampton says. “Just letting them — I don’t want to use the word shine, because it’s not about that — but just respectfully giving them the space to tell their stories.”

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